If you look up privacy for enterprise, you’ll be greeted with a ton of articles talking about the tools you should use, the steps you should take, what you need to know about compliance…it can easily be overwhelming. So, what are some basics that you should know when researching privacy for the enterprise? We break it down.
Think Beyond Security
One of the mistakes people regularly make is equating security and privacy – but there’s a difference. Security is about protecting the enterprise from attacks. Privacy is about complete control of your data. What that means is that the steps you take to secure your data from malicious actors by using end-to-end encryption or antivirus tools doesn’t ensure that your data stays private. Privacy is about making sure data can’t be leaked because it was accidentally uploaded to an insecure location or forwarded over email by an employee. In many cases, it’s all too easy for an employee to share sensitive information, either inadvertently or on purpose, by posting it to Facebook, for example. True privacy means making sure that can’t happen. It means knowing where your data is at all times and being able to protect it from access by unintended recipients.
Build a Culture of Privacy
Privacy is much more than just picking the right tools to protect your data – it’s building a culture of privacy in your enterprise. Make sure that your privacy policies and procedures like what data is considered sensitive and what to do if you receive a suspicious email are clear to your employees. Provide regular trainings to employees to recognize privacy risks to data such as phishing attempts and so that they regularly take steps like only accessing secure sites to protect anything they do online. Promote a culture of transparency; if employees are worried because they didn’t follow procedure or made a mistake and as a result, there may have been a breach, they shouldn’t be scared to report it. Also make sure that employees only have access to the data they need to do their job – if they don’t need access to sensitive data for their tasks, don’t provide that access.
Recognize That You Aren’t Infallible
Even with a strong culture of privacy, hackers can be relentless, employees can make mistakes and breaches can still happen. The important thing is that you have taken the steps to prevent it as much as possible and, if it occurs, that you’re ready to spring into action and address it. Make sure to have an incident response plan and a business continuity plan. During a breach, you should have an alternative network to communicate with employees that can’t be compromised while you respond to the incident. That way you can get key operations back up and running as quickly as possible and keep employees in the loop while out of any compromised systems.
Thinking beyond security, building a culture of privacy, and preparing for breaches are three pillars for a strong privacy strategy. Vaporstream goes beyond security, helping you build a strong privacy strategy by making sure that your communications are not only secure, they’re under your control at all times. With Vaporstream, employees don’t need to take any extra steps to make sure their communication is protected – privacy is built into the product. We also help you prepare for breaches by ensuring that should a breach happen, you have an alternative network for communication to keep key operations flowing while you deal with the crisis at hand. See what we look like in action here.